Since I live out here in the missile fields, I fail to see what all the hub bub is about. The old folks say there's 70 or 80 around my town, so MY neighborhood is ready for just about anything in the way of self defence. (Why anyone can buy an empty launch silo with 15 acres, easement, airstrip, helio pad and chainlink fence for under 5,000 dollars out here.) No sense in me worrying about who else plans on getting ONE OR TWO. I've read where AMERICA has 50,000 warheads in serviceable condition, some with ICBMs still attached. It's OUR Commander-in-Chief-of-Sales-and-Theft that WE need to worry about.

Ted: F.E. Warren A.F.B. Cheyenne, Wyoming.

@ Mike: do you mean 5000 dollars an acre, or 5000 dollars total?

Although the proprietor is an enthusiastic purveyor of the MICFiC* line, and wouldn't like the political perspective of most of the people who post here, http://ed-thelen.org/loc.html gives the location of quite a few former missile sites. One near me is now a park. I've been there - there is signage informing the public of the former land use.

*MICFiC

M ilitary
I ndustrial
C ongressional
Fi nancial
C orporate Media Complex

- a conspiracy to use, abuse, and confuse the populace - metaphorically, to milk, shear, and slaughter the sheeple.

Almostinfamous: They auction them off. It all goes as one piece. Last one I heard about went for 3500 +/- dollars. What YOU should remember is the silo has held a highly radioactive nuclear weapon for 50 years. There could be HEALTH issues.

There's a piece of advice in the book "The Second Force" by Gary Emery and Pat Emery (reprinted in paperback as "The Positive Force") -

Don't think - look.

By thinking about what is plausible, instead of looking for accounts of what is alleged to have happened, I once again have confused myself - and those who might possibly have read my previous postings of the day. To wit - on Winston Churchill's confusion of Irving Berlin and Isaiah Berlin.

[Winston Churchill confuses the two Berlins.....]

Radio 4, 19 April 1992

Copyright (c) The Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust 1998

ISAIAH BERLIN:

... this occurred in the spring of 1944 - I should say February or March. What happened actually was this.

Mrs Churchill said to Winston: "Irving Berlin is in town, he has been very generous to us" - he'd given a large sum of money to - a war charity, I don't know which, with which she was connected. "If you meet him, do tell him we are very pleased with him."

Mr Churchill said, "I want him to come to lunch."

She said, "No, no, no, I did not mean that. I mean, if you meet him in the Churchill Club," she said, "just pat him on the shoulder and say we are very grateful to him."

"I want him to come to lunch," he said, but she couldn't understand why.

Well, Irving Berlin sat next to Winston Churchill, who said to him, "Mr Berlin, what is the most important piece of work you have done for us lately, in your opinion?"

Poor Berlin obviously couldn't quite make out what this man had said. After some hesitation, "I don't know, it should be A White Christmas, I guess."

And Winston said "Are you an American?"- there was this thick American accent.

Berlin said, "What? Why? Why? Yes."

Then Winston again turned to Mr Berlin and he said, "Do you think Roosevelt will be re-elected this year?"

Irving said, "Well, in the past I have voted for him myself, this year I am not so sure."

At this point Mr Churchill became rather gloomy, he couldn't understand who he was dealing with. He still thought it was me. Obviously my despatches were quite coherent, but he obviously had an idiot before him.

Finally Winston said, "Mr Berlin, when do you think the European War is going to end?"

Berlin said, "Sir, I shall never forget this moment. When I go back to my own country I shall tell my children and my children's children that in the spring of 1944 the Prime Minister of Great Britain asked me when the European War was going to end."

Winston was very displeased about this: he really more or less lost his temper, got up - lunch was over.

Poor Irving Berlin went off to the Savoy, where he was sharing rooms with Sir Alexander Korda, and he said to Korda, "You know, Mr Churchill is probably the greatest man in England, or in the world maybe, but I don't know what it was, I somehow felt we did not click. I don't know what it was. Now she is a wonderful woman, I could talk to her always. With him, I don't know, something, something - I just can't make it out."

Winston immediately went to a Cabinet meeting, after lunch, told them the story with the greatest pleasure.